Preliminary jobs numbers released by the state Department of Labor on Thursday show there were more than 8.3 million private-sector jobs in New York, an increase of 24,600 or 0.3% compared to the previous month.

That's the highest number of private-sector jobs in the state since current record keeping began in the 1970s.

New York state's unemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.9% in April, slightly behind the national rate of 3.6%.

The numbers come from federal surveys of 18,000 employers in the state.